SPACE FACTS

The German-Russian project Icarus will allow you to monitor wildlife from space. With the ISS, it will be possible not only to understand the migrations of fauna representatives but also to predict natural disasters and epidemics. By the end of the year, upon completion of the test phase, the system will be available to scientists. Using the Icarus space-based surveillance system, biologists will significantly expand their knowledge of migrations in the wild. For this, the astronauts mounted a 130-kilogram...

This year on July 13, the German-Russian astrophysical observatory "Spektr-RG" from the Baikonur Cosmodrome was put into operation. Among them is the eROSITA X-ray telescope, developed by German scientists, which will study the universe at a distance of 1.5 million kilometres from Earth for seven years. The launch of the Proton M carrier with the Spectrum RG observatory onboard took place last Saturday in normal mode at the Baikonur Kazakh Cosmodrome. This was reported by Roscosmos and the German Aerospace Center (DLR)...

Two unique "star reserves" were opened this year in Germany: Sternenpark in the vicinity of the town of Gülpe in the territory of the Westhafelland National Park and the Rön Biosphere Reserve, located on the border of Hesse, Bavaria and Thuringia. It offers stunning views of the starry sky, clean from smog and not "polluted" by artificial lighting from the Earth. There are 28 such zones in the world. The breathtaking beauty of the night sky over Germany received international recognition this year from the International Dark-Sky Association...

The international scientific collaboration LIGO announced the discovery of gravitational waves. The presented results of research and experiments are called historical because they confirm the "ripples of space-time" — one of the predictions of Einstein's general theory of relativity, which recently celebrated its 100th anniversary. An international group of physicists announced the discovery of gravitational waves - distortions in space-time, the existence of which Albert Einstein predicted the existence of his general theory of relativity a hundred years ago...

He turned the key to the start and said in Russian, "Let's go!". For the East Germans, he is as legendary as Yuri Gagarin was in the USSR. This year on the 21st of September Sigmund Yen passed away at the age of 82. On August 26, 1978, Valery Bykovsky together with Soviet cosmonaut, he made an expedition to the Soyuz-6 orbital station. The flight lasted 7 days, 20 hours and 49 minutes and 4 seconds. Sigmund Ian was the first German to enter space. After that triumphant flight - he flew around the Earth 125 times - Sigmund Ian became a national hero in the GDR...

In 2018, NASA launched the InSight space probe with seismometers on board to Mars. They will measure the internal activity of the red planet and record tremors - "marsquakes." The main scientific goals of the InSight mission on Mars are to study the tectonic activity of the planet, determine the size, composition and state of aggregation of its core, the thickness and structure of its mantle and crust, and study the frequency of meteorite incidence. The main question that worries scientists: why...